Mandela's link with black America unique

5:29 PM,
Dec. 9, 2013

Written by

DeWayne Wickham

When Nelson Mandela arrived in New York City four months after his 1990 release from detention after 27 years in a South African prison, he was widely - and wrongly - seen as just the leader of an African struggle for self-determination. But as I quickly learned, he was much more than that.

During a Yankee Stadium speech that I witnessed as a member of a small group of journalists invited to cover his 12-day, eight-city U.S. visit, the then-71-year-old Mandela claimed a special connection to the large black crowds that would turn out for him wherever he went. There is an "unbreakable umbilical ...